


Clothes Make the Hero

by FluffyLlamacorn



Series: Friendly Neighborhood X-Men [2]
Category: New X-Men: Academy X, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Fashion Design, Gen, the joy of creating, the last three as minor cameos from teammates who will have larger roles in the next chapter, unstable molecule uniforms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyLlamacorn/pseuds/FluffyLlamacorn
Summary: The Friendly Neighborhood X-Men need a friendly neighborhood look to cement their friendly neighborhood mission. Pixie is on the case, learning from the master of creating new uniforms.





	Clothes Make the Hero

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not up to date enough to even pretend to know what's currently going on in comics, so this is still set in some nebulous time shortly after Gen X ended. This will be more apparent later, so let's just keep pretending I can figure out how to update at a reasonable pace.

Megan has an _idea_.

Last time she got an idea, it led to her and her old friends rekindling an old team and that was just yesterday, so today’s idea must be just as good!

Alright, here’s the idea: They need new costumes.

“That’s dumb,” Julian says when she shares it at lunch.

“Can you make them bullet proof?” Vic asks.

“Of _course_ I’m making them bullet proof, do you think I’d put it on otherwise?” Megan responds. To think that’s even a question.

“Where are you gonna get them?” Nori asks.

Megan smiles.

***

“Excuse me? Ms. Pryde?” Megan calls as she rushes down the hallway midair to catch up with her headmistress.

“Hey. Gwynn,” Ms. Pryde greets, stopping up to talk with her student. “The no running rule includes high speed flying.” She looks kind of stressed, maybe a little worn. Running the X-Men must be hard.

“Sorry, Ms. Pryde,” Megan pretends to say sheepishly, but she’s grinning too much to be convincing. She does land on the ground, though. “But I was wondering, what would I have to do to get to play with the unstable molecule machine?”

Ms. Pryde crosses her arms and tries to look suspicious. “Oh? What are you planning?”

“Well, me and some of my friends want to go help the locals and we need some new outfits to look real stylish doing it,” Megan explains.

“Is this for your squad?” Ms. Pryde asks. “Because in that case, your advisor should-”

“Oh, no, no,” Megan interrupts and then kicks herself mentally because she’s trying to get on her good side. “I mean, Nori’s in it too, but it’s more a cross-squad thing. Basically, we’re getting the New X-Men back together, back from when- Well, I guess you were in space for most of that… Anyway, I wanna play around with new uniforms! I’ve had this one for _years_! Can you imagine?”

Ms. Pryde thankfully chuckles instead of getting offended by her many missteps. “I’ve read the files. Come on, I think we can figure something out. I seem to recall the joy of changing uniform every other week.” She leads her down the corridor and into the main hall, where they take a flight of stairs down. At the bottom of the stairs is a collection of hallways. Megan has been down the ones leading to Cerebro and the Danger Room many times, but now Ms. Pryde leads her down another hallway, less used, until they reach a door labeled “Unstable Molecules.”

The room they find when they enter is circular and grey, filled with a very huge, very sciencey machine in the middle. It’s got this 80’ies trying-to-be-sci-fi vibe to it with a rounded front giving it a streamlined look even though it’s a machine not intended to move. There’s a terminal on the front with a screen and a keyboard. Next to the terminal hangs a helmet that reminds Megan of Cerebro. On the side of the machine is a podium and above it a sort of… lamp or maybe a shower head sticks out. It’s high enough up that most people can stand beneath it on the podium. Around the room are various clothing racks. About half are filled with generic X-Men uniforms while the rest are various ridiculous outfits in different shapes and colors.

“Oh wow,” Megan says.

“It’s, ah, been a while since anyone updated the look of the machine,” Ms. Pryde excuses.

“No, it’s cool,” Megan says and sets off. The door opens to a platform that follows the round of the wall before a small staircase goes down. The whole thing is about half a person tall, but with her wings Megan can just float down in front of the machine where she starts pressing random buttons. “How does it work?”

Ms. Pryde catches up and presses some buttons in quick succession with practiced ease to get them to a start menu. “Well, either you use this _very_ high-tech terminal that was all the silly humans could understand back then,” she explains, showing off how to change the basic outfit through the keyboard. Even with Ms. Pryde’s practiced hands, it takes a long time to do basic adjustments and Megan’s heart falls at the thought of having to design seven unique uniforms like that. “ _Or_ , you let the machine connect with you cyber-telepathically by putting on the helmet and have it scan your thoughts for outfit designs.”

“NICE!” Megan has already crammed the helmet on before Ms. Pryde finishes talking. “What now?”

“Think of how you want your outfit to look,” Ms. Pryde instructs.

Uhm. She hadn’t exactly gotten that far? She had been hoping for a template to base her work on. But she could do this. It should be… colorful. And her color should be pink, definitely. Would the others want pink? If not, she could just have a pink version of the outfit. Alright, so pink and…. There should be an X. She kind of wants some ruffles on there?

“Interesting,” Ms. Pryde says and Megan looks up to see the screen. There’s a simple catsuit in neon pink, covering everything from the neck to ankles except for the hands with a small, black X on the chest like a symbol. White ruffles are placed at various angles, lengths and places around the body, none in flattering ways.

“That wasn’t on purpose,” Megan mutters.

“It’s hard to get the hang of,” Ms. Pryde reassures her. “What’s wrong with it?”

As Megan starts to think about the shade of pink, the picture on the screen changes to a nicer one that matches her hair. As she considers the other faults, the X grows to fill her entire upper torso as it changes color to a darker pink and the ruffles merge into a skirt that matches it. And oh, she remembers to ask for bulletproof fabric and it seems to grow slightly thicker as well slightly looser, no longer requiring to be painted on.

She grins. “I did that.”

“Yeah, you did,” Ms. Pryde agrees. “Well done.”

“How do I make it?” Megan asks. “I want to try it on!”

“We’ll make this one out of the spare uniforms down here. I need to make sure the fabric you create will hold together, before I let you change clothes you’re wearing,” Ms. Pryde explains. “There’s a changing room behind the machine for trying the first one on in.”

 “Alright,” Megan agrees. She quickly flies over to the nearest rack, grabs a uniform, and places it on the podium. “What do I do? Do I press a button?”

“You could, but you can also just think it.”

Go!

And lo and behold, the machine shoots down a white light – with some pink hints, Megan notes with satisfaction – on the uniform and reshapes it into the design Megan had just created. And then the old uniform is gone and Megan’s creation is left as a thing in the real world.

“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!” Megan squees.

Ms. Pryde walks over and picks up the garment, stretches the sleeve in her hands. “Nice fabric, good choices,” she mutters to herself. “And a whole lot prettier than my first design. Try it on, Gwynn.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Megan almost rips the uniform from her hands and rushes to the changing room where she quickly changes. In a moment of lucidity she doesn’t completely notice, she takes the helmet off and drops it on the ground. Her wings take up more space, but she’s used to getting around those. A big helmet like that? No thanks. As she changes, she notices that oh hey, wouldn’t it be fun if her sleeves flared out to match her skirt? And actually, the X would look better on her chest if it was a tiny bit higher up. She got the opening mechanism for her wings just about perfect, but that could also be tweaked, if the holes are a bit larger, it’ll be much smoother.

When she comes back out in her brand new outfit, she finds that the screen is already showing the tweaks she’d planned. “How did it…”

“The machine will keep in telepathic contact with you until you leave the room,” Ms. Pryde explains. “Once you get practice, you can change everything in a heartbeat. It’s pretty great.”

“It’s so cool,” Megan say as she goes over to a screen with mirrors. Looking in them, she decides to change the main pink, so it’s lighter than her hair. “Can I stay here forever?”

Ms. Pryde considers it. “Well, not forever, but you can continue working without supervision. I have a meeting to go to, but you seem to get the machine and you can handle any emergency that might come up.”

Megan twirls in front of the mirrors and decides her skirt should be wider. More twirlable. “Thank you, Ms. Pryde!”

“Did you get how to find the place?”

“Yeah, down the hall and up the stairs. Also, I’m a teleporter. I can get back home safe, don’t worry about me.” She turns to grin at her headmistress again, really seeing her for some reason and for the first time in a long time really noticing the short hair. It actually super suits her? “Good luck with your meeting,” she says with a huge smile.

Ms. Pryde leaves while Megan zaps the changes to her outfit into real life. It feels. Super weird. To have her outfit change shape around her body, but like. Not in a bad way and it’s so much faster? So that’s good. She’s disappointed to find that she can’t look into the mirror from the podium, so she flies over to it and pushes it into place for next time for looking properly in it.

It’s great. It’s so exciting, clothes coming into shape by her mere thought. The flare around her wrist doesn’t match her skirt though. It needs to be a second layer, just like the skirt is. A thought, a zap and that’s what they look like. It’s so cool.

Hmm. But it needs something more… intentional. Her outfit is great, don’t get her wrong, but it doesn’t look like a super hero outfit. It looks like… a pink catsuit with an added skirt. And honestly, she’s just _done_ a catsuit. They all have! It’s time for some variation!

So what else could she do? Well, layers must be the opposite of a catsuit, right? She goes for a dark pink base with a lighter pink robe around it, just a basic dress for now. She adds the X as a belt-like pattern around her waist in another shade of pink. Right before she orders the machine to make it around her, she realizes that she might want to keep this first ever outfit she’s made? So she jumps out and throws another base uniform in there instead, which she remakes.

She’s surprised to find that the garment she’s made is actually two: An inner suit that covers her body (and she doesn’t even mind that she ended up creating another catsuit in her attempt to create something else) and the outer robe. She hadn’t realized the machine could make it into several pieces, but it makes as much sense as creating fake layers, like those t-shirts with long sleeves sewn onto.

As she changes, Megan happily notes that her wing holes work perfectly and then it’s time to look in the mirror again!

It’s. Hm. The cut of the robe seems way too much like a Ms. Marvel rip-off. Now, Megan is a big fan and Sooraya is pals with her, but that doesn’t give Megan an excuse to steal her look. So. A V-neck is a good start. She still really wants that skirt, so… maybe sort of like a trail thing? A longer back than front is such a cool look. She lifts the top of the robe-dress-thing up in her mind’s eye, makes it maybe more of a jacket with that and strengthens the suit underneath, now more pants than leggings.

Let’s see what that does.

It’s great. It’s super fantasy adventurer in all pink, which is the best color scheme. But, well, she has to admit, maybe the X shouldn’t be pink? It’s like. Sometimes a break is good. Rarely, but, like. Once in a blue moon. But not blue either. Blue is Nori’s color. She needs something neutral and ends up choosing white. It looks pretty good, the colors going from dark pink on her limbs, to light pink on her torso to white on the X and waaaaait a minute. If she- Oh _hell_ , yes, if she changes the V-neck of the jacket-robe-thing a bit, she’s created another X with her neckline.

A zap and it’s done.

She’s flying around the room, trying to get a feel for how the suit might work in real life when she realizes- The others won’t be able to rock this. Pink doesn’t suit them nearly as well as her and Nori will refuse to even try. Sure, she could just color swap it to something else for them, but then where’s the unity? This is about being a team, not just about her playing dress up like a pretty princess.

Besides, looking at it for the team and not just for her, it’s too dark. It doesn’t signal happy go lucky, here to help brighten your day and it _definitely_ won’t in blue and brown and black like the others are gonna want. Gods, what was she _thinking_? She needs. She needs something light and neutral to tie them all together with and then she can add her pink accents for her own outfit, but-

Oh.

She just needs to inverse the colors.

Well, she’ll need to do more, but step one will be inverting the amount of pink and white. White background. Pink details. She can do that.

She lets go of the skirt idea (at least for now, maybe she can add it back in later) but keeps the X belt. This time it’s a hot pink that matches her hair against a white background. She adds pink sleeves and turtleneck as well has pink boots and uses another standard uniform as base. Her current outfit is too good to throw out, it’s just not the right one for this job.

With a deep breath she recovers her joy and asks the machine to make a new outfit.

It’s not great yet, she decides as she looks in the mirror, but it’ll be much easier to manipulate into something that fits her friends as well as this one will fit her. And looking at the bright color, she feels… lighter. Better. Good.

Megan grins and tries to figure out how to improve it. Alright, long sleeves are out. Short sleeves and gloves? Sleeveless and hella long gloves? The turtleneck looks weird on its own, so she makes the top of chest pink as well. The boots aren’t working, so she makes them into shoes instead.

Yeah. This is starting to look real good, she decides as she looks at the changes after another update zap.

**Author's Note:**

> All I know about unstable molecules and Kitty's use of it to change uniform on the regular comes from Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men and a little bit of googling, so if anything I wrote goes against established canon, it all makes sense, because this is just a different model.
> 
> I promise to stick with this story at least until I've assembled the team and gotten in the uniforms that was the reason for the entire story, but, uhm, I can't promise I won't have another large gap again. That's just what happens when you try to juggle five different projects at once. *shrug*


End file.
